What's wrong is right: A response to the state of the discipline

In the June issue ofSociological Forum, several authors addressed the question, What's Wrong with Sociology. Answers included increased fragmentation of the discipline, and the lack of an identifiable cumulative core of sociological knowledge. This paper examines many of the claims made by the contributors to the June 1994Sociological Forum, reframes their arguments, and by placing debates regarding the problems in sociology in a broader perspective, identifies many of the recent advances made by the discipline. Focusing on such notable contributions to the field as feminist and postmodern scholarship, we locate the positive side of multiple perspective research.Feminist Scholars in Sociology is a collective of researchers and teachers at the University of Colorado interested in exploring and sharing feminist theory and methodology.     

Contextual and ideological dimensions of attitudes toward discretionary abortion

This study examines the contextual and ideological dimensions of attitudes toward discretionary abortion using two national surveys. The abortion attitudes are dichotomized in terms of consistent opposition versus consistent support. Discriminant analysis, partial correlations, and stepwise regression procedures are used in the analysis. Findings indicate that education and attendance at religious services are the two most significant contextual dimensions and sexual permissiveness and fertility ideology are the two most significant ideological dimensions for explaining attitudes toward discretionary abortion. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Incorporating the Period Eye

ABSTRACT

In recent years, museums have staged a number of “exhibitions of exhibitions.” These experiments in institutional, curatorial, and artistic revivalism have ranged from allusions to and quotations from past installations to full-scale re-enactments and reconstructions. The motivations of the curators and artists responsible for these diverse projects have included the desire to recuperate both famous and forgotten shows and also to reproduce past modalities of display and spectatorship, and thus build an archive of the immaterial through retrospective and performance practices. Some of the most interesting “exhibitions of exhibitions” have focused on the historical conditions and institutional conventions of spectatorship, with the objective of alerting the contemporary viewer to differences in the performativity of spectatorship, past and present. By evoking former practices of looking, walking, and touching, these exhibitions also remind us that techniques of the museum visitor are both embodied and acquired. They require the contemporary viewer to recalibrate their choreography of their looking and moving; put another way, they activate what Michael Baxandall termed the “period eye” in order to decode the visual effects of the exhibition and to relocate oneself in the position of the historical spectator. This article explores how a number of recent exhibitions have redrawn attention to the corporeality of museum visiting and viewing, as well as to the historical acquisition of competences and attitudes that we take for granted today.     

Operations research in the management of the airlines

This paper is intended to present an introduction to the use of operations research in the international airline industry, and to demonstrate the scope and significance of the airline OR activities. First, the special reasons for the viability and spread of airline OR are discussed. Then a functional framework for an airline is outlined, to be used in analyzing the problems of an airline and relating the OR work to it. Four major applications are described, corresponding to four major components of the framework. These applications are: schedule development, overbooking control, crew scheduling and engine management, respectively. In each case we describe the problem and its significance, indicate the types of solution techniques which have been developed, and assess the implemented solutions. The paper concludes with comments on the current state-of-the-art and the future of airline OR. A detailed bibliography is given.Both of the authors have been operations research directors in major airlines and more recently have focused their attention upon the industry as academic researchers. This background has provided us with an unusual opportunity to analyze the role of OR in the airlines, and our paper seeks to share with the reader some of the insights we have gained thereby.     

Work and non-work factors as perceived causes of symptoms of psychological strain

Two studies are reported in which the respondents were asked to attribute causes to their experienced symptoms of stress as measured by the General Health Questionnaire. The results show that most respondents can do this, that there are differences in attributions by symptoms, and that the pattern of attributions is similar for two different occupational groups, even though the level of symptomology is higher for nurses than for laboratory workers. It is argued that this simple addition to symptom questionnaires might have useful diagnostic value, but that further research with different populations and other symptoms is desirable.     

Social Interaction in a Heterogeneous Apartment: An Investigation of the Effects of Environment upon Behavior

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of propinquity (spatial proximity) to social interaction in a heterogeneous apartment, specifically, whether spatial propinquity or social homogeneity is the better explanation for resident interaction. We also examine the effects of other characteristics of the apartment design upon interaction patterns among apartment residents. Data are derived from in-depth structured personal interviews with residents of the apartment complex and are analyzed with standard sociometric techniques. Findings indicate that while propinquity and other design features may precipitate initial contact and interaction, this contact will remain superficial unless it is reinforced by shared social and demographic characteristics. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the literature about the effects of the man-made environment upon behavior.     

股东参与治理的私人收益和社会收益的实证研究

本文探讨了股东参与治理所带来的私人收益、特定股权结构的社会收益以及股权集中成本三者之间的关系。我们分析的结果表明,当股东与经理人员之间的利益冲突水平较高、其它治理机制的作用较弱时,股权集中(股东参与治理的积极性较高)可以创造大量的社会收益;反之,股权的集中与分散程度(股东参与治理的积极性较低)对社会收益的影响不明显。本文的研究结论为我国股东参与治理及股权结构改革提供了重要启示。